Bolt spell

A bolt spell is any attack spell that is based on the caster's Spell Aiming skill. These spells benefit from a more offensive stance, but only result in a three (3) second cast roundtime, rather than a true three (3) second roundtime (RT). There are two types of bolt spells: true bolt spells and ball spells. Bolt spells may be CHANNELed for a higher chance of hitting a vital area and subjects the attack to less critical randomization. The 3 second hard RT imposed by CHANNELing cannot be mitigated by any haste effect.

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Lore Ranks and Damage Factor Bonuses

The Damage Factors (DFs) for many bolt spells can be increased by training in the appropriate lore skill. The DF bonus is based on the number of ranks trained. For the following spells the DF increase is 0.001 per rank up to 50 lore ranks, 0.001 per two ranks for ranks 51 to 100 and 0.001 per four ranks for ranks greater than 100. A character with 200 lore ranks would see a total DF increase of 0.100.

Ball Spells

Ball spells are a subgroup of bolt spells that do less damage on a single target but have the ability to perform additional splash damage on several creatures (including the original target) due to explosion of the ball upon impact.

There are four steps to determine the number of targets struck by a ball spell.

Step 1

A random number X is generated between 0 and 8, with lower numbers more likely to be chosen.

Step 2

Based on the caster's ranks in the appropriate Lore, a bonus is added to the initial X value (see table below).

The final number of targets struck by the splash effect is the smaller of (X + BONUS) and (Y + MOC Ranks)

For those who prefer a more intuitive explanation, the appropriate lore determines the minimum size of the explosion caused by the spell whereas MOC determines how well you can place the explosion such that it hits the most targets. (A practical example: water balloons. The appropriate Lore skill determines what size water balloon you can throw; MOC ranks determine how accurately you place it within the group of targets with which you are dealing.)

Tactical Considerations

Analysis of the ball spells' splash situation leads to the conclusion that having at least one rank of the relevant Lore skill plus one rank of MOC will guarantee a splash to an additional creature--assuming that at least two creatures are in the room--because even if a 0 is rolled the first time the "possible" range is 0-1 (due to the full Lore benefit being added); on the second roll (a range of 0-1) even if 0 is rolled again then the rank of MOC will enable the splash effect.

Players might regard this as the effective spell-casting equivalent of MSTRIKE.

Given that all of the Lore skills that affect splashes are seed 1 progressions, the rate at which additional targets are added is quite quick. A modest investment of training points for ten (10) ranks of Lore skill yields +4 targets--a +50% addition to the "possible" target pool--and guarantees that at least four (4) targets will always have the capability to be splashed ("possible" roll will be 0-8 with +4 added).